Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Weird Attic, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Britton Tolliver. This is the artist's first exhibition with the gallery, and will highlight the breadth of Tolliver's personal brand of abstraction, his investigative approach to geometry, and his curiosity about the sculptural and textural potential of acrylic paint. The artist will be in attendance at the opening reception on Thursday, February 19, 2015.

Britton Tolliver's practice poses tough, critically-minded, and deeply felt questions about what it means to make abstract paintings.While his work can be read as a conversation with both the historical roots of the genre and its often problematic contemporary iterations, it is above all a conversation (in the studio), with the visual vocabulary and material presence of each canvas as it evolves in real time. The paintings are therefore records of a kind of paradoxical call-and-response, in which the artist's drive to create improvised forms becomes inseparable from his instinct to organize and structure them.

Tolliver begins by using watercolor-based stains to make a relatively ‘free’ gestural composition. Though only a fraction of these colors and gestures will be visible in the final painting, they are the foundation for what is to come, indicative of the spirit that will saturate the work as it evolves. Tolliver then builds up layers of acrylic paint, defining forms by masking off sections of the original composition that he chooses to retain. As tape and blade join brush and pigment as tools, the repertoire of painterly moves expands and Tolliver's characteristic geometric forms begin to emerge. These include arrangements of seemingly gestural––yet carefully constructed––circular shapes. Like smoke rings, these are not static objects, but moments of definition in a field of ever-changing possibilities.

In most cases, a dense grid of squares or rectangles makes up the painting's final layer. The paint is built up so that the grid acts as a kind of bas-relief, with dense textural harmonies and dissonances playfully interacting across its variegated surfaces. In this way Tolliver creates a single, fractal-like composition that is in fact a constellation of many smaller compositions; each square and its associated group of dividing lines, however unique, suggests the complex and irreducible code of the whole picture of which it is part.

At first, the grids appear to be the most salient feature of the work, a way of orienting the eye and organizing other marks. But before long any seeming strictness in their regularity begins to fall apart, and they reveal themselves as places where some of Tolliver's boldest and freest experimentation takes place. When the artist rips away areas of accumulated medium, for instance, the grid is ruptured: underlying layers emerge, and the history of the painting is thrust into its immediate present.

Such moments also allow the work to extend its associative reach beyond the purely formal terms of abstraction. Skinfather, for instance, with its ascending rings, palette full of synthetic hues, and unlikely, nuanced luminosity, brings to mind a skateboard or surf shop outfitted with stained glass windows from a medieval cathedral. Harsh Toke, meanwhile, dispenses with the grid altogether. Instead, virtuosic handling of acrylic paint and a prismatic array of colors result in layering that is perhaps more optical than it is physical. Like an analog television whose vertical hold function has a mind of its own, the painting recasts the broad light of Southern California as an inner phenomenon, subject to the moods and intensities of the imagination.

Born in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1976, Britton Tolliver received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Currently, Tolliver lives and works in Los Angeles. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at MJ Briggs/Anna Meliksetian Gallery, Los Angeles and GOLDEN, Chicago. Group exhibitions in which his work has been featured include Angels With Dirty Faces at Hilger Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, Painting in Place, curated by Shamim Momin at Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Los Angeles, CA; Steven Bankhead, Britton Tolliver, Torbjorn Vevi at Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Baker's Dozen at Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Splinter of the Mind's Eye, curated by Joseph Wolin at Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MI; Architecture on the Cusp of Contemporary Landscape at William King Museum, Abingdon, VA; and Can I Borrow Your Spaceship at Contemporary Art Institute Detroit.

Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present S W I R L, an exhibition of new watercolor works on paper by San Francisco-based artist Serena Mitnik-Miller. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery after a year exhibiting both nationally and internationally in California and Japan. The artist will be in attendance for the opening reception on Thursday, February 19, 2015.

With not much more than a faint pencil guide by the artist’s own hand, Mitnik-Miller’s use of pattern and repetition is a core element explored in the artist’s latest series. Mitnik-Miller explains, “The initial line work of pencil drawing guides the formal process, but there’s no finite plan… each color is based on the previous color used. It’s about the process, too, so I’m flexible with where it leads me.” The artist begins this pattern with a base color, and proceeds to dilute the pigment to create lighter, inner bands of color. This tonal spectrum is then repeated with the original color, resulting in compositions that are striking, meditative, and balanced.

Initially undertaking studies in marine science, it’s no secret that Mitnik-Miller has a profound affinity for nature: “There’s something so powerful about nature, it’s what makes me thrive. In my life I’ve spent time in different places and the times I feel most rejuvenated and connected is when I’m deeper in nature, away from the material world. Even though my work is abstract and not a literal sense of nature, it remains my biggest influence, which translates to my work.” Although nature may not be present in representational form, it is at the forefront of the artist’s inspiration for all aspects of her work, and life.

The primary medium for Mitnik-Miller’s work is watercolor. In one piece, the ocean-like, blue tones of the pigment, along with the pattern’s rhythmic, ebb and flow is reminiscent of tides moving in and out across the paper. Other works play with light stone grays and burnt umber, their curved bands of color resembling inner tree rings or layers of the earth. The soft greens and pale yellow bands of another work travel around the page and re-join, curving in and out like a twisted forest vine. The artist’s love of watercolor and the varying degree of precision the medium allows, mirrors the changeable, unpredictability of our natural surroundings.

In contrast to earlier works based on literal representations of nature—such as leaves, waves, and water drops—the works in S W I R L began an experimentation further focusing on abstraction and less so with a true-to-life depiction of nature. Ultimately, Mitnik-Miller’s interest remains on the repetition of simple forms and shapes, and their interaction on paper: “This show is an exploration of color and linear formations. No two works are alike. I continue to push the boundaries of where this will take me until it leads me in a new direction.”

Born in 1981 in Massachusetts, Serena Mitnik-Miller spent most of her childhood in Hawaii. Mitnik-Miller received her BA in photography and printmaking from the University of California in 2008. In 2014, Mitnik-Miller completed a large-scale mural at the Facebook Headquarters in San Francisco. Selected solo exhibitions include INBETWEEN at Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY (2014), WATERCOLOR at Curators Cube, Tokyo, Japan (2014), S W I R L at Park Life Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2014), F O U N D at Art Park Gallery, Byron Bay, Australia (2012) and Watercolors at SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Your Favorite Artist’s Favorite Artist at Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY (2014), The Objects Show at R 20th Century, New York, NY (2013), Dreamers at Ron Herman Sendagaya, Tokyo, Japan (2012) and Sunset Circles at POP Gallery, Culver City, CA.

The Journal Gallery is pleased to announce “Gumbo Shoes,” Leif Ritchey’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

In “Gumbo Shoes,” Ritchey presents a new series of paintings derived from the idea of change, and how one adapts to it. Utilizing the artist's self-taught process of applying paint onto wet, unstretched canvas, the works in “Gumbo Shoes” follow the trajectory of Ritchey's previous works in their reference to contemporary fresco painting and the sometimes unexpected results of this process.

You can't step into the same river twice.
Nature keeps moving,
Take a walk on the wild side into the dark musk of the unknown.
Let's go down to electric avenue,
Infrared to ultraviolet, holographic, metallic, fluorescent and flower essences.
Moon kissed city. Architecture as frozen music, eye dance, eye tunes, with every song air waves fade and echoes bending corners out of cars, and bars float on by between silence and light reflecting, bouncing off steel and glass, mud and plants—the river of darkness.
In the treasury of the shadows patterns emerge—form to formlessness follow the flow of the times.

Leif Ritchey was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1975 where he currently lives and works. His solo exhibitions include “Sun Tea” at ltd Los Angeles, CA (2014), “Poster Paintings” at Shoot the Lobster, New York, NY (2012), “Chameleon Jeans” at Martos Gallery, New York, NY (2011), and “Spots” at The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2010). Leif Ritchey’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including “To The Happy Few” at Jeanroch Dard, Paris, France (2014), “LIFE” The Journal Gallery at Venus over Manhattan in New York, NY (2014), “Dirt Don’t Hurt” at Jolie Laide Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (2011), and “Material Matters and other Issues” at CANADA, New York, NY (2010), among others.

Judith Charles Gallery is pleased to present Immediate Female; an interdisciplinary group exhibition featuring more than 20 artists based in New York City.

Works by these artists and their collective presentation expand our understanding of contemporary art by questioning the usual categories of art and art-making. The immediacy of their work encourages a more complex understanding of the art of our time and current thinking on art and gender. Many of the artists have participated in events and exhibited their work in major museums and exhibitions including the Brooklyn Museum, Documenta, Mass MoCA, Museu d’Art Contemporani Barcelona and the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Jen Catron’s indulgent and fantastical installation-performances and objects create and redefine the nature of audience participation and viewer experience while often commenting on the art world and our material culture. Caitlin Cherry’s new installation uses laser beam technology to depict a world where even museums and art galleries are militarized zones. This project grew out of the works she created for the Brooklyn Museum’s Raw/Cooked series (2013) inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of weapons. Dana Sherwood’s work, like many of the artists in Immediate Female, can be read as subversive takes on the domestic. Sherwood’s drawings often directly reference moments recorded when her work enters a world outside of the gallery and the art world.

The language of art beyond the conceptual is also apparent in the exhibition. Sculptors are defending materiality with undertones of the feminine like Irini Miga’s use of porcelain compared to Sarah Anderson’s and Genesis Belanger’s use of materials often associated with men. Painters are delving deep into the painting discussion, works by Heidi Hahn, Dani Orchard and Nikki Maloof highlight the historical significance and the immediate relevance of the use of the figure and ideas out of modernism, while Justine Hill explores ideas born in postmodern abstraction.

In conjunction with the exhibition the gallery will host a panel discussion with curators, dealers and auction house specialists in early February, and an evening of performance at the culmination of the show, full details to be announced shortly. For further information, contact Robert Dimin at 212-219-4095 or at robert@judithcharlesgallery.com

Kai Matsumiya invites you to “Joker’s Solitaire” by Z Behl, from Thursday, January 22nd through March 8th.

Oversized playing cards of 52 fully-exposed nude men and 2 cards of herself as the joker (15” x 23” each) will be displayed in the front exhibition space on green felt.

The cards are comprised of photographs printed on three types of tissue and mounted on wooden boards with a handmade silkscreen pattern on reverse. The front side of the works show men who range across all age groups, ethnicities, sexual orientations and occupational backgrounds, willingly and enthusiastically posing to be documented. Many of these men are close friends of the artist.

The back side of the works depict a pattern that references standard card back motifs with a prominent “female eye” at the center. These works will be presented in varying game-sequences and aesthetic possibilities; for example “pairs”, “three of a kind”, “full house”, house-of-cards, and so on.

Another room introduces a film component of Joker’s Solitaire. The artist, dressed as the joker, plays solitaire, a one person game, carrying and placing the oversized cards on a green felt floor.

Finally, the back room encourages guests to play with standard size playing card versions of the artworks on a card table. 500 of these decks will be available to the public upon request.

The artist Z Behl (b. 1985) was born and raised in New York City. Her vibrant installations have been exhibited at 7ELEVEN Gallery in New York, The Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, and ArteBA in Argentina. She was recently the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. She has been an artist-in-residence at the MOCA Tucson, PIONEER WORKS, and the ESKFF at Mana Contemporary. She graduated at Wesleyan University in 2007.

This is not an artistically rounded off story, and nothing is explained in it, and there seems to be no reason why it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be told. You must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you have ever come close to are like this in these respects—no explanation, no logical coherence. Here is the story:

We were living in a big house out in the woods someplace where it was always dark and always raining, and outside between the trees, behind the bushes, were strange men with eyes like basement windows and big railroad gloves and I was the only one who knew, but I couldn’t tell whether they were trying to get in or trying to keep us from getting out.

I was in the library, sitting by the fire, listening to the rain. No one came here anymore. Even the groundskeeper kept his distance. The house stood empty and emptier. After I’d left, everything continued to grow and change. In the evenings I saw things: shadows rushing into doorways, reflections in the floorboards, faces peeping up inside the drain. I heard fingers testing the handle of my bedroom door.

And it was getting worse. Last night, October 12, during the storm, I lost power. Luckily I was in the library, and was able to light a candle to find my way upstairs. I was nearly at the top when someone whispered to me, ‘Push, pull. I’ll push, and you pull.’ The voice seemed just inches from my ear. Had I dropped my candle, as I all but did, I can only imagine what would have happened. As it was, I managed to rush up the last flight, and was quickly in my room with the door locked. I stayed up for hours watching the door and watching the windows; listening. But nothing more happened that night.

October 15—I was much troubled in sleep. No definite image presented itself, but I was pursued by the very vivid impression that wet lips were whispering into my ear. After this, I suppose, I fell asleep, but was awakened with a start by a feeling as if a hand were laid on my shoulder. To my intense alarm I found myself standing at the top of the lowest flight of the first staircase. The moon was shining brightly enough through the large window to let me see that there was something huddled on the second or third step. At first I thought it was a bundle of linen that the maid had forgotten, but then I saw it shudder. I crept up to bed again. I do not know how.

October 20—I am afraid of everything inside this house.

It was Saturday, the 4th of April 1998. It was about 3:30 am. She was in the library. She was on the stairs feeling the carpet between her toes. She was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror with the lights off. The tub was running and the sink was running too. It was pouring outside and even with the faucets going she could hear the rain against the windows. She was going to get a drink of water. There were no cups. He must have been there the whole time, watching.

My bedroom was his favorite place inside the house. He had a headlamp or a flashlight that he would shine in through the window. He would come in through the window like something being poured inside the room.

I went to the living room to go to bed. That’s where I sleep now. I put my hand on the wall to put the light on, but the light did not work. I looked up at the fixture and then moved my eyes down. He was right there in front of me but I wouldn’t look. I was shouting for help over and over again. I ran as fast as I could only I was unable to stop to open the door. I ran straight into the wall and fell back on the floor. My head was all pins and I was screwing my eyes shut but he pulled them open with his fingertips and made me see his mask.

It was not a mask. It was a face—large, smooth, and pink. I could see the minute drops of perspiration that were starting from its forehead. I remember that the jaws were clean-shaven and the eyes were shut. It seemed as though the face had been pulled over the head like a pair of tights.

Then he switched on another slide, which showed a great mass of snakes, centipedes, roaches, and flying things that were long like dragonflies with the texture of moths. Somehow he made it seem as if they were pouring out of the picture and getting in among the crowd. There was a dry rustling sound and soon a high-pitched kind of clicking drone that made us press our hands against our ears. We shut our eyes. Still we felt things writhing at our feet, pelting our faces, working in-between our lips and underneath our clothes.

When he opened his eyes he was back inside the library, sitting by the fire. He could remember her coming in and asking what he was doing there sitting alone in the dark. He could remember opening the door, and it was day, and then he was sitting there, and it was night. She turned the lights on, and she had this look on her face. It was like she was terrified but didn’t want him to know she was afraid. He had the feeling that she was afraid of him, but she never said. He saw the moon through the window, rippling with the rain. He remembered opening the door and the sun was up. Then it was dark outside and he couldn’t remember anything that happened in between. He is trying to remember but he can’t. When he is outside at night he feels like he is being watched. Sometimes he remembers things he doesn’t understand. It gets especially bad in the evenings. There are too many shadows, shapes that correspond to nothing at all. He tried to remember, but nothing came to mind. He went back to his book. Yet, while he tried to read the curtains kept catching his eye. That is, he found himself looking across at them every now and then. There was an effect as if someone kept peeping out from inside the curtains, in between the folds.

Then I dozed, and then I woke, and thought that Roger, my brown spaniel, who ordinarily slept in my room, had not come up. Then I thought I was mistaken: for happening to move my hand which hung down over the arm of the chair within a few inches of the floor, I felt on the back of it just the slightest touch of a surface of hair, and stretching it out in that direction I stroked and patted a rounded something. But the feel of it, and still more the fact that instead of a responsive movement, absolute stillness greeted my touch, made me look over the arm. What I had been touching rose to meet me. It was in the attitude of one that had crept along the floor on its belly, and it was, so far as could be recollected, a human figure. But of the face which was now rising to within a few inches of my own no feature was discernible, only hair.

Many times over the years I would wake up suddenly in the night, unable to move a muscle, except for my eyes, as I looked around the room. And many times I would see a dark figure standing at the side or end of my bed. I would lie in the bathtub listening to someone else’s breathing. I could wait with whatever patience was required.

A compulsive layering of patterns dominates Ayott’s work, created with dots, dashes, lines, slashes, circles, ovals and loops. She uses anything on hand to stamp out a layer of marks, such as plastic bottle caps or a lid to jar, rolling, scraping, brushing and squeezing paint into various layers. The accrual of repetitive marks creates a dense quilt of patterns that weave in and out of each other. Eventually, a skewed image grows organically from her process of loose patterning. She shifts between balance and distortion, remaining conscious of space, volume, texture and other formal elements.

In her recent work, Ayott has intensified the combinations of colors she employs, creating more spatial depth within her images. The incorporation of bright, vibrating colors shimmer in space, enhancing both the power and playfulness of the work. Combining such saturated colors with the sensuality of her detailed layering activates the surface with a buzzing, charismatic energy.

A crucial part of Ayott's studio practice is spent with a notebook and a dictionary. She uses titles to hint at narrative and describe mood. There is a sense that the work is both serious and curious, expressing the emotional and logical qualities of accumulating thoughts while fleshing out the meaning by way of repetition. As viewers we read layers as the overall color palette, and then closer up, small bits of distinct information reveal themselves; we get lost in visually picking apart each distinct pattern and color, discovering the pieces that created the whole.

Diane Ayott is a professor in painting and foundations at Montserrat College of Art. She has had one-person exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the Northeast. She received her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and currently lives and works in Boston.

New York painter Josette Urso paints intuitively in reaction to her immediate surroundings, from both inside and outside her studio. Using an intense, delicate manipulation of paint, she gets lost in the act of painting with blissful abandon, creating sumptuous abstractions that reference landscape, still life, and views of New York City.

Urso’s surfaces are dense tapestries of small, energetic marks. She mixes colors softly on the canvas, blending them just enough to leave minute stripes of color remaining in the grooves of her brushstrokes. The obsessive dabs and flourishing marks relay her sense of joy in capturing her observations.

Exploring the mystery of our perception of time and space, the works seem close up and far away simultaneously. They seek to reflect multiple moments occurring at once in order to comment on a live experience. An endless stream of information is constantly projected at a person from all directions; Urso’s work acts as a filtering of the physical, thoughtful, auditory, visual and even technological stimuli that we interact with at any point in time.

Josette Urso received her MFA in Painting from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Urso’s work has been exhibited widely across the country, including the New York Public Library, The Drawing Center, and the Bronx Museum for the Arts. She has been awarded numerous grants and residencies, in particular, from the National Endowment for the Arts, Basil H. Alkazzi, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation as well as the Camargo Foundation and Yaddo, The Alma B.C. Schapiro Residency in Sarasota Springs, NY. Urso lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Kent Fine Art is pleased to present Pablo Helguera:
Strange Oasis, January 31–March 14, 2015, with a
reception for the artist on January 30, 6–8 pm.

Pablo Helguera (b. 1971, Mexico City) is an interdisciplinary artist with an interest in socially engaged art and performance. His work as an educator has often influenced his work as an artist, often incorporating language and literature to articulate and address local cultural and social issues. “La Escuela Panamericana del Desasosiego / The School of Panamerican Unrest” (2003–2011) is regarded as one of the most extensive public art projects on record as well as a pioneering work for the new generation of socially engaged art. Helguera
collaborated with more than forty organizations and over a hundred artists, curators, and activists during this period. Since then, Helguera has composed installations including “Libreria Donceles” (KFA 2013) in which the artist facilitated the establishment and subsequent itinerancy of a Spanish-language bookstore, thus conflating the aesthetic experience of Mexico City’s old bookstores with the politics of the Spanish language across the US-Mexico border. Since then, “Libreria Donceles” has been re-established for the Kadist Art Foundation (San Francisco), for Arizona State University (Tempe) and soon for Red Hook, Brooklyn. Locally, Helguera was also featured at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival with “The Parable Conference”, “Crossing Brooklyn” at the Brooklyn Museum with “1899 (Susannah Mushatt Jones)”, and at the Guggenheim Museum’s recent exhibition “Under the Same Sun” with the performance “On the Future of Art”.

In “Strange Oasis”, Kent Fine Art becomes the stage and platform for new iterations and re-stagings of the artist’s recent interventions, which took place throughout the Americas and Europe. Some of the projects presented include Société Civile pour l’Enterrement de Pensées Mortes for Rectangle, Brussels, 2013, Nuevo Romancero Nuevomejicano for Site Santa Fe’s thematic exhibition “Unsettled Landscapes,” and Vita Vel Regula (Rules of Life) for the Renata Bianconi Gallery in Milan.

The exhibition’s title comes from the essay on the phenomenology of play titled “Oasis of Happiness” by German philosopher Eugen Fink. In his essay, Fink refers to play as a “strange oasis, an enchanted rest-spot in [man’s] agitated journey.” Helguera’s
interventions, which use history, geography, and language, create parenthetical experiences, projections into other places, times, and physical spaces. According to the artist, the interactive projects in this exhibition come from the interest in creating “parenthetical experiences” that extract the viewer from daily routine by engaging them in leisurely activities that can acquire very personal interpretations.

The various projects presented here address geography, location, and time, focusing on the significance of human relationships and the limits of communication and language.

In Helguera’s games and rituals the past is never buried, but instead is ever-present, establishing a “temporal present” necessary for engagement. In “Société Civile pour l’Enterrement de Pensées Mortes”, a room houses the ashes of dead and obsolete thoughts, as once guarded over by a Belgian sect of freethinkers during the turn of the century. In “Nuevo Romancero Nuevomejicano”, a velvety space mimics the lobby and gambling table of an illegal casino in pre-war New Mexico, circa 1836. By playing a variety of old gambling card games, visitors are told of their future through the divinatory legends based on the history of the US-Mexico War.

A special feature of this exhibition will be interactive Saturday afternoons (12–5 pm) with the recreation of “Nuevo Romancero Nuevomejicano” and“Société Civile pour l”Enterrement de Pensées Mortes.” For further information, please contact Katrina Neumann (KNeumann@kentfineart.net) or the gallery website at www.kentfineart.net.

Flames on the Side of My Face brings together work by four artists working in different media to explore anger. The work presented eschews stereotypes of angry artwork such as noise, yelling, or violent movement; instead the agitation is held eerily still and quiet. Through this exploration and focus, the work becomes intensely physical and bodily.

Judith Bernstein exhibits a charcoal drawing from 1973. As viewers, we’re left with the aftermath of a frenetic, scribbled outburst that resembles yet critiques the mark-marking of the (male) minimalist artists of the day. Judith Bernstein was born in 1942 and lives in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include The New Museum, New York; The BOX, Los Angeles; Studio Voltaire, London; Karma International, Zurich; and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York. She has an upcoming exhibition at Mary Boone, New York curated by Piper Marshall.

Sam Contis shows two photographs from her recent body of work made at Deep Springs, a small, all-male college located in the remote California desert. This body of work deals with constructions of masculinity within the landscape of the American West. She was born in 1982 and received her MFA from Yale University in 2008. Her work has been published in Blind Spot, The New York Times Magazine, and Capricious. She has exhibited work at Danziger Gallery, New York; Workspace, Los Angeles; and The Newspace Center for Photography, Portland.

Tony Feher suspends a group of bottles filled with black liquid from the ceiling, their hectic swarm momentarily arrested mid-air. Feher was born in 1956 and lives in New York. Since the 1980s, Feher has exhibited poetic sculptures and installations made from everyday, recognizable materials: his 25 year survey show organized by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston just concluded its five city tour. Recent gallery exhibitions include Sikkema Jenkins, and Co., New York; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco; and Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston.

Daniel Ingroff’s paintings are intensely worked; layer upon layer of bright color attempts to conceal a darker underpainting. His work draws on a history of abstraction, often incorporating complex optical effects into detailed drawings and paintings. Daniel Ingroff was born in 1983 and received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2014. His work has been included in exhibitions at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles; Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn; and Night Gallery, Los Angeles.

Koenig & Clinton is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition with Olivier Mosset, featuring recent large-scale monochromes. For nearly 50 years, Mosset's paintings have challenged conventional notions of artistic originality and production. The current exhibition groups paintings of varying shape and scale, emphasizing the artist's continual consideration of surface, color, environment, and repetition.

Mosset's radical approach to painting first captured international attention in the late 1960s, when Olivier Mosset joined Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni to form the “non-group” BMPT in Paris. BMPT aimed to distance the act of painting from its display, formal abstraction from myth, and singular authorship from value. BMPT criticized the Modernist canonization of “pure painting”, as well as the institutional framework of the art world at large. Highly collaborative in practice, the artists often conflated their own identities through public performances in which they produced artworks in tandem.

In his current work, Mosset continues to mine these themes. The four largest canvases on view each pay homage to an influential figure or peer that the artist has encountered over the course of his international career, from Bern, Switzerland, to Tucson, Arizona, to New York City. Respectively, Alfred Leslie is green; Robert Breer is blue; Alex Hay is brown; and Duane Zaloudek is grey. Bearing the names of other artists, these paintings playfully entice the question: who is the maker? Mosset's signature, whether real or imagined, is not his concern.

All paintings exhibited in the gallery employ the use of polyurethane, a highly durable industrial material often used as truck-bed liner, which results in dense and grainy surfaces. Unmarked by gesture, Mosset's monochromes engage a materialist sensibility while remaining tethered to art historical discussions about appropriation and the readymade.

Olivier Mosset's (b. 1944, Bern, Switzerland) work has been included in exhibitions presented by museums, private galleries, and institutions, such as: Manifesta 10 (2014), the Whitney Biennial (2008), the Fifth Biennial of Paris, the Lyon Biennial (2003), the Times Square Show (1981), and the Museum of Modern Art, Paris (1967). His work is represented in numerous public collections including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Migros Museum, Zurich; and Musée des Beaux Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, among others. The artist lives and works in Tucson and Brooklyn.

For further information please contact info@koenigandclinton.com or call (212) 334-9255. Hours of operation are Tuesday-Saturday, 11AM-6PM and by appointment.
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“Past to Present” – Artists: Ben Frost, Noah Scalin, COPE, Hanksy, Rob Tarbell, David E. Peterson,
Chris Dean, Sangsik Hong.
February 7th – March 4th
Krause Gallery – www.krausegallery.com
149 Orchard St. NYC
Opening Reception: February 7th, 6-9pm
NEW YORK — Krause Gallery is excited to announce “Past to Present”, a Group Show.
Past To Present showcases the perpetual growth of the artists. Each artist has a piece from their past as well as
their present work on display.
Growth and evolution in an artists work is necessary for their continual success, without such evolution their
work becomes redundant.
Ben Frost: (born Brisbane, Australia) is a visual artist whose work seeks to challenge contemporary
norms and values of world culture and society. Frost’s visual work places common iconic images from
advertising, consumerism, entertainment, and politics into startling juxtapositions that are often confrontational
and controversial. He currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia, and exhibits locally and internationally.
Frost has been exhibiting throughout Australia and internationally over the last 14 years, including solo
shows in London, New York, and San Francisco, as well as group shows in Amsterdam, Berlin,
Mongolia, and Singapore. In 2007, Frost participated in Tiger Translate in Beijing, collaborating with
local Chinese artists. His work has appeared in countless magazines and newspapers including Vogue, Harper’s
Bazaar, Oyster, WeAr, Monster Children, The Sydney Morning.
COPE2: Fernando Carlo (also known as Cope2) is an artist from the Kingsbridge section of the
Bronx, New York. He has been a graffiti artist since 1978-79, and has gained international credit for his
work. Though he is now known worldwide as being one of the NYC graffiti legends, he didn’t receive
recognition in the mainstream graffiti world until the mid-1990s Cope2′s cousin “Chico 80″
influenced Cope into writing. In 1982 he made his own crew called Kids Destroy and eventually it
changed to Kings Destroy after he dubbed himself “King of the 4 Line”.[1] Cope2 is well known for
his “throw-up” and is also one of the most known users of “wildstyle” graffiti, a style which originated in the
Bronx. Cope2 has achieved considerable mainstream success for his artwork and has collaborated and released
many projects alongside such names as Adidas and Time Magazine, Sheperd Fairey, Retna, Kenny Scharf and
more.
Rob Tarbell: In my practice, making art is as much directing intent as it is about scientific tinkering. All of my
diverse work is linked by the transformation and manipulation of traditional materials as i explore nontraditional
ones. The loss of an original and the use of elaborate processes are inherent to the creation of the
smokes. The work intends to both balance accident with control and give permanence to the ephemeral.
Hanksy: New York City based artist HANKSY uses the streets as his canvas, employing clever puns and turns
of phrases to delight fans and observant passersby. Shortly after moving to New York in 2010, HANKSY began
noticing the city’s vibrant street art scene, in which hand painted works of art, elaborate stencils, and detailed
screen prints enrich blighted spots and capture the attention of urban dwellers. Wanting to contribute to the ever
growing movement, but determined to maintain a light-hearted approach, HANKSY began satirizing British
street art legend Banksy by mashing up his most famous works with references from Tom Hanks films. His
clever remixes delighted New Yorkers, turning HANKSY into a social media phenomenon and quickly earning
him a place in the competitive New York street art world. HANKSY’s new work broadens his satirical scope,
lampooning pop culture icons like Bruce Willis and Ryan Gosling, while staying true to his punny origins. With
HANKSY on the streets, no celebrity is safe.
Noah Scalin: Noah Scalin is a published author, a professor, a father, a public speaker, a business owner and of
course an accomplished artist. Krause Gallery is inspired by his work and proud to
have his second exhibition at the gallery in NYC.
Noah Scalin’s work explores the theme of transience – specifically the temporary nature of individual lives and
the tenuous nature of all human life on the planet. By using everyday items, including mass produced consumer
goods & found materials, he repurposes things that would normally end up in the ever-growing garbage dumps
of the world, allowing them to tell a story of the potential long-term impact, both positive & negative, of human
creations. And like human lives, his installations are intentionally temporary, reverting back to their component
parts after a short lifespan, only to exist in memories and photos after they’re gone.
David E. Peterson: David E. Peterson describes his work as follows:
“Industrial Design informs my work. Inspiration might come from a brightly-colored sneaker, an eye-catching
dress, an intricate watch or a well-arranged print ad. Once my interest is captured, I immediately begin
translating the design into my work.” I begin the process by systematically identifying the most important
elements of the industrial design. I am looking at color, line, shape, scale, and finish. These key traits are broken
down, then reconstructed as the foundation for my own composition in Photoshop. This computer rendering
becomes my mock-up and I refer to it as I build my panel, paint it and apply the finish. My workshop becomes
an artist’s assembly line; the end result is a precise art object in the fashion of post minimalism.
Chris Dean: I work almost exclusively with lenticular printmaking, a process that creates illusionary qualities of
depth and motion on a flat two dimensional surface. The effect is similar to holography but works through the
use of a carefully designed surface overlay that directs imagery to a viewer’s eyes in particular patterns. The
same underlying principles are shared by 3D movies and Viewmasters but lenticular has the benefit of not
requiring glasses or special viewers to see its effect.
My aesthetic and conceptual interests are rooted in art that leans towards the psychedelic, with bright
colors, a busy canvas and a curiosity of subjects difficult to pin down. I favor internal observation
over cultural critique, things that look like religion but have no theology. I like art to be shaped with
intention, a core of something personally felt, without excluding the possibility of the uncontrollable or
unforeseen playing a role.
Sangsik Hong: Sangsik Hongs' work is all made by hand; each straw is hand placed, a contrast to the
technology we live in today. The softness of the acrylic he paints behind the straws creates a precise beauty that
embodies Hong's work. The totality of Hong’s work would not be as fresh and uninteruppted had a machine
made it. His emotions and personal desires go into making each piece. Hong’s sculptures go beyond the limit of
the materials; the images of lips may be interpreted as symbols of desire. Connecting such symbolized images
and symbolic meanings (power and sex) reveals clearly that his interest is focused on human desires.
### High Res images available upon request
Hanksy – (past) Wheatpaste on panel Hanksy – (present) Hand Painted acrylic on assembled wood
Krause Gallery - www.krausegallery.com
149 Orchard St. NYC – benjamin@krausegallery.com

Galerie Lelong will present Alfredo Jaar's Shadows from February 13 through March 28, 2015. The artist's first solo exhibition in New York since 2009, Shadows is the second project in a trilogy of works exploring the power and politics of an iconic single image and follows The Sound of Silence, 2006. In Shadows, Jaar employs a photograph by Dutch photojournalist Koen Wessing taken in Nicaragua at the height of the 1978 insurrection. The photograph, which Jaar has described as perhaps the “strongest expression of grief” he has ever seen, was taken in Estelí, Nicaragua during the final days of oppression by the Somoza regime. The image depicts the moment shortly after two women are told of their father’s death. This will be only the second time that Shadows, which premiered at the SCAD Museum of Art in 2014, has been on view and will be reconfigured especially for the presentation at Lelong.

The structure of Shadows was inspired by Chili, September 1973, a photo-based book created by Wessing about that historic month in Chile. In this book, Wessing tells the story of the military coup in a sequence of images and without a single word. Wessing was one of the few international photographers to document the coup in Chile and the aftermath; in 1978 he went to Nicaragua and photographed the insurrection of the Sandinistas against Somoza. Viewers are guided through Shadows by the light of small sequential images that unravel the narrative. After walking through a dark corridor, the viewer is led to a central space in which an extraordinarily intense light emanates from a silhouetted image. This light illuminates and stuns the viewer, who becomes a participant in the action. Jaar’s choice to use the frame of a silhouette as a source of light intensifies the symbolic representation of grief and loss. As in many of Jaar’s works which explore the politics of images, Shadows engages the viewer to think of these two lives embodying many innocents who die in conflict or are oppressed. According to the artist, Shadows is also an homage to Koen Wessing (1942-2011), a photographer who did not care about words and trusted that his images would speak for themselves.

Light and illumination have been an important part of Jaar’s work since 2002. The artist's Lament of the Images, 2002, first shown in Documenta X, introduced this strategic device. Lament of the Images will be shown at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in March 2015 as part of recent acquisitions. The Sound of Silence has been exhibited 25 times world-wide to date, in 18 countries and 10 languages; it was recently acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), São Paulo (1985, 1987, 2010), as well as Documenta (1987, 2002) in Kassel. A selection of recent solo museum exhibitions since his last show at the gallery include SKMU, Norway; KIASMA, Helsinki; and Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires, (2014); Fondazione Merz, Torino (2013); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2011); Berlinische Gallery, Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V.; and Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2012); Hangar Bicocca and Spazio Oberdan, Milan (2009). In 2013 Alfredo Jaar represented Chile at the 55th Venice Biennale. He recently completed two important public commissions: The Geometry of Conscience, a memorial located next to the recently opened Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago de Chile; and Blind Spot, a memorial to the disappeared in Buenos Aires. More than fifty monographic publications have been published about his work; the most recent is Tonight No Poetry will Serve, published by KIASMA, Helsinki. Jaar became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. In conjunction with his exhibition at Lelong, Jaar will lecture at the 92nd Street Y on March 12, 2015.